In the present state of the art in computer aided drafting and design systems, generated patterns are generated by means of manually moving a puck (or mouse) in a desired pattern over a surface corresponding to a coordinate system, such as a planar two dimensional surface for generating corresponding visible two-dimensional patterns on an orthogonal display. Thus, a draftsman manipulates the puck rather than a pencil or pen to generate a pattern, which is stored in and available from the computer system whenever desired. U.S. patents representative of these type of systems are U.S. Pat. No. 3,399,401 to T. O. Ellis et al., Aug. 27, 1968 for "Digital Computer and Graphic Input System"; U.S. Pat. No. 4,543,571 to R. A. Bilbrey et al., Sept. 24, 1985 for "Optomechanical Cursor Positioning Device"; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,643,148 to A. Brown, et al., Feb. 15, 1972 for "Ball Tracker Assembly".
In systems of this type the manual input of information by the manually movable mouse or puck is effected in various ways. Thus, mechanical and electronic position sensors are available. Some complex systems exist that require an optical sensing mouse to distinguish between differently colored grid lines on a surface over which the mouse moves, such as the S. T. Kirsch U.S. Pat. No. 4,364,035, Dec. 14, 1982 for "Electro-optical Mouse" and U.S. Pat. No. 4,546,347, Oct. 8, 1985 for "Detector for Electro-optical Mouse". In these systems, the position sensor may require a multiplicity of up to seven cells for determining a coordinate point on a two-dimensional surface. It is pertinent that a coordinate point may be located by a mouse or puck in this invention for control of a cursor in an associated computer screen, but various known prior art systems and detection schemes may be used with the present invention for achieving the manual control function generally related to a puck or mouse herein for locating specific coordinate points.
Pattern formation by manual manipulation of a puck is pertinent to the present invention. Most patterns involve the generation of lines. Since the draftsman conventionally uses a pencil or pen to draw the lines in place on a pattern being formulated, the puck has heretofore been used in a similar manner by moving over-the-line position in-situ to generate lines with the attendant requirement to devote a considerable amount of time and precision in the manipulation of the puck. Thus, it has been conventional to formulate the lines in-situ in the visual pattern being monitored during pattern construction. If it is desirable to change the location of the line or to change its slope, it requires complex manual manipulation of the puck, generally requiring deletion and redrawing. There has not heretofore been available in the art a computer aided drafting and design system directed explicitly to the efficient and precise formulation and placement of lines.
Furthermore, when a manually generated pattern from the puck movement is processed and stored in the computer system, considerable storage space is required to define the lines. In addition, during the generation of the lines, data processing required to position and generate the lines becomes complex and cumbersome.
It is accordingly an objective of this invention to resolve the foregoing deficiencies of the computer aided drafting and design system art by providing improved line generation systems.
A more specific objective of this invention is to formulate and generate lines positionable in a pattern produced in a computer aided drafting and design system in a simplified manner, and to increase the flexibility, speed and capacity of such computer systems by reducing the processing complexity and storage space devoted to line location and definition.
Another specific objective of this invention is to provide means and methods of manually formulating patterns including lines in a computer aided drafting system with less time and fatigue for the draftsman.